Skip to main content

Wired article about GR

“with its missiles and death camps and atomic bombs that sealed humanity’s suicidal covenant with technology—was civilization’s Brennschluss, and we have been in free fall ever since.” -Wired

I picked out that word to get into.

With this and other articles that come out regularly, I got to thinking about how Shakespeare as the knighted playwright of England, has people shift the purposes and misuse quotes because he is so revered. Is Pynchon America's version. I mean the writing is so obscure it's hard to imagine that possible, but with the regularly produced articles, it seems possible.

"Pynchon teases out a hefty head trip of plots and subplots, introduces hundreds of characters, and riffs on rocket science, cinema, Germanic runology, Pavlovian behaviorism, probability theory, witchcraft, futurism, zoot-suit couture, psychedelic chemistry, and the annihilation of the dodo. But there is, amid the novel’s encyclopedic remit, something like a story."

"Some Marxist thinkers maintain that everything in history happens (at least) twice: first as tragedy, then as farce."

I guess this means Trump running for president this time means it's a farce, and he's just going to grift his supporters into handouts to float his poor business that needs grift to stay afloat, and the reason why he doesn't want his taxes exposed is because he lies on them, and he doesn't pay taxes because he's in so much debt. He's not a bazillionaire, the banks own him.

The article is a bit of a stretch, I mean this world is quite different, but you can bet with the legalization of marijuana across many states, and the fact that Pynchon smoked according to another article, means that we'll be groovin to his high writings. Someone visited him in California while he was writing GR and he smoked and partied with young people, and there was a girlfriend and children in the background. He introduced himself through a friend who went to Syracuse with him, and Pynchon was warry, but he hung out with him for a week.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Manet and Degas

  Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special.  In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

The case for Harris

Motley Kamuka Blog endorses Kamala Harris. In general, Trump just wants to lower taxes on the rich, and do nothing, sell whatever influence he can to line his pockets. Apparently the emoluments clause in the constitution has no teeth. Harris has a set of ideas about policy that are fairly middle of the road. In most countries she's would be seen as a centrist. Spin about her radical agendas are exaggerated.  I'm not sure how he got past " grab them by the pussy ", but he did and here we are. Women: Obviously the idea of giving women pregnancy tests at the borders of the state, and then if they come back and don't have a baby, they go to jail, isn't really what most women want. Pick Harris.  I understand if you think abortion is murder, maybe you've been told that by the Catholic church, which has the same ideal of Buddhism that you don't kill--so follow your religion for yourself. Not everyone is Christian or Buddhist or even has a religion. Women are ...

Gravity's Rainbow Notes Franz Pokler

From pp 397-433: Franz Pokler , a German rocket scientist. He is marginally associated with early attempts to develop rockets in the 1920's. During the war, Weissmann controls Pokler, giving him routine assignments and keeping him in line by allowing him yearly visits from a girl who he says is Pokler's daughter. The girl spends the rest of the year in a concentration camp, and Weissmann's implied threat is that she will be killed if Pokler fails to cooperate with Weissmann's scheme. Weissmann's purpose is to use Pokler to make one small part for the A4 rocket. In the end, having performed his task, Pokler is released; Slothrop meets him living quietly in the ruins of a children's village after the end of the war. His daughter also survives. Wiki notes on the Franz Pokler section 397-433 Abstract of "Franz Pökler's Anti-Story: Narrative and Self in Gravity's Rainbow" by Robert L. McLaughlin. (access the article  here  from  Pynchon Notes ) Gra...